


You Can’t Take a Part of Me Unless You Leave a Part of You

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Footage Not Found [25]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, Implied Potential Romance, Male-Female Friendship, Missing Scene, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 03:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: After reuniting with Carol and the rest of the group, Daryl keeps feeling like he should be happy. He’s not. One particular person should be there, and instead she’s gone.At least one other person isn’t about to let him pull away.





	You Can’t Take a Part of Me Unless You Leave a Part of You

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, need to blame cc5/TJ and the bethyl Discord for this. 
> 
> I’m tagging it Daryl/Beth, but in fact I don’t think it has to be read that way, except for one line. So really, beyond “Beth was incredibly important to Daryl”, you can take it however you want. 
> 
> By the way it’s been years but every now and then I just get so fucking angry about Coda.
> 
> Anyway. If you enjoy, please lemme know. ❤️

He keeps feeling like he should be happy. So he keeps feeling like a failure.

He did, in those first moments. He did feel happy. It shocked him when it came with such sudden intensity, and it shocked him that it came at all; since the crossroads and over the course of all these strange reunions he’s been by turns relieved, satisfied, and bitterly glad, but none of those emotions have even approached what he would consider _happiness_.

He supposes he had begun to assume that happiness was beyond him.

But then that last reunion. In the open air, in sun and safety, her eyes brilliant and her face shining under the dirt and grime, and then how solid she was in his arms, how real, how strong holding onto him—stronger than he believes he’ll ever be—and it was as if a numb limb began to tingle to life.

Sleeping limbs often hurt when they wake up. He was crying and he didn’t care. It did hurt, and he was happy.

But of course it didn’t last.

The others are gathered around the fire they’ve made, tucked against a low outcropping. From where he’s sitting he can see their shapes set black against the firelight, and he can distinguish their silhouettes well enough to tell them apart. He can hear their voices, although he only catches the odd word or two. But he can’t see their faces, and here comes the bitter gladness again, because if he can’t see their faces that means he doesn’t have to look at their smiles.

He’s not going to stoop to covering his ears so he doesn’t have to hear the cheer in their voices, their quiet laughter—the thought of doing so strikes him as petty and childish, and and he can—

Over those cheerful voices, he can practically hear what _she_ would say, her musical voice at once gentle and reproachful.

_Let ‘em be happy. It doesn’t have to hurt you. They’re not bein’ happy _at_ you. You’re not the only one who’s been through all kinds of hell._

The back of his head thumps on the trunk of the tree he’s sitting against. He closes his eyes and digs his nails into his palms.

“Daryl?”

His eyes fly open and his head jerks up. His hand tightens on his bow and his muscles are instantly coiled, poised to spring; even as he recognizes the voice, he’s ready to fight or run again. Again, again—sooner or later always fighting and always running. But for the briefest of moments they’ve found a little rest.

And he and Carol have somehow found each other.

He loosens and gives her a thin smile. His gaze flicks to what she’s holding: a couple greasy pieces of the pair of possums he bagged, partially wrapped in a spare strip of cloth.

“What?”

“You should eat,” she says, and holds out the meat.

He grunts. “Already did.”

“Yeah, you barely took a bite.” She drops to a crouch and proffers the meat more insistently. He can’t see her smile, not with the fire at her back, but it’s in her voice as plain as day. “At least wait a day or two before you start arguing with me?”

He sighs; that patented Carol Pressure, not overly aggressive but persistent beyond all reason. She won’t give up until he admits that she’s right and does it her way—and she is, and he should.

And it hits him again like a hard left to the jaw: What her persistence reminds him of. Who it reminds him of. That he’s found her, yes.

That he’s still missing someone else.

“Daryl?” Her voice is lower, smile fading, the query in her tone edged with concern. There’s no point in lying to her—he’s bad at lying but when it comes to Carol he is uniquely terrible—and he sighs again.

“Just ain’t hungry.”

“If you don’t eat, I swear to God I’ll prop your jaw open with a stick and shove it in there. You know I can.”

The image is so cartoonishly absurd that he barks laughter, reaches out and takes the meat from her. There’s no point in lying to her, and he wasn’t; he isn’t hungry. Oh, his body is certainly imploring him for calories, but as far as absorbing them via his stomach goes...

But he can’t see how Carol shoving a stick vertically into his mouth would be especially comfortable.

He brings one of the pieces to his mouth and gnaws at it, and she sits down beside him, drawing her knees up and curling her arms around them. Now the firelight touches her face, tracing its outlines in red-gold; she’s staring at the fire and the group, not at him, and he takes the opportunity to study her more closely without awkwardness. It’s the same face, the one he’s come to know so well and could never forget... but it’s also not the same. It’s harder, sharper-angled.

Older.

He wonders how much his own face has changed since she last saw him.

After a moment or two she shoots him a look—half sardonic but half not. “You gonna hang out in the dark all night, or come join the rest of us?”

He rolls a shoulder, speaks around the last mouthful of meat. It’s tough, gamey, and he’s simply glad to be eating at all, instead of being chowed down on himself. “Someone’s gotta keep watch.”

“Not all night. You’re tired, you need to stay sharp. Tyreese has offered to take the next shift.” She pauses, and the pause is dense. He squirms slightly. He missed her so much, he doesn’t know how to describe what finding her like he has is doing to his insides, but some of whatever it is isn’t sitting comfortably. “You should come be with us. Being all together again... It matters.”

_It does matter._

_But we’re not all together again, _something screams from out of the shadowy depths of his mind—the parts of himself that he’s been trying to put away, because they’re not going to help keep him or anyone else alive. _We’re not. We lost everything, so many people, we ran and ran and now..._

_We’re not all together._

“Daryl?” Her hand on his knee; the weight is gentle, almost hesitant, but he jumps and just as quickly she withdraws it. Not a flinch, not the way it once would have been—her early, nervous extensions of self toward him, her need to connect and her fear of what might happen if she did—but instead like someone might pull back from an animal they’ve accidentally hurt. He feels this and he’s abruptly and terribly ashamed.

Of all the people here, the one who he doesn’t want to pull away from him. Even Rick...

It’s not the same with Rick. Not anymore. No matter how desperately he wishes it was. Sitting beside him in the aftermath of one of the worst nights of his life, watching him wipe the congealed blood from his mouth and jaw, the emptiness in his steely blue eyes. Rick lost something that night, and Daryl is very afraid that he might not ever get it back.

_We can’t be who we were._

Carol doesn’t touch him, but she bends closer, her glittering eyes searching him. “Are you alright?”

“I’m.” He stops, huffs, looks away. He found the strength to talk to Rick about it, haltingly, but there had been something about that moment of terrified extremity in the train car that allowed it to flow more freely. There was little time to focus on what exactly it meant. He told what he knew, what he was certain of, and then they had to fight again. They had to run.

Now it’s all different.

“I’m alright,” he says softly, and in the periphery of his vision he sees her shake her head. A louder peal of laughter from the fire and his gut coils with sharp resentment. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.

“You’re not.” She sighs and leans back against the tree, her head tipped up and her gaze fixed on the vague, spindly shapes of the branches. Dim firelight beneath, brighter stars above. The moon has set, but it was high and bright when they walked from the burning shack into the darkness.

Fire on the trees then, as well. He remembers wondering if it might spread and set the entire forest alight, and he remembers that he half wished it would. Not with despair or hatred but instead with a kind of giddy, primal madness, a sense that anything might be possible. That perhaps it would be better if everything turned to clean ashes and enriched the soil so something new could grow.

Her hair in the receding glow, and her small, strong form darting among the trees. She was in the shadows but somehow the light always seemed to pursue her.

He stares down at the bow, his hands. “I lost Beth.”

Carol is silent for a long moment, looking at him. Then: “She died?”

“No.” He shakes his head immediately, firmly. He’s told Maggie this already, but he took her aside to do it, and he did so as briefly as possible. The others, he assumes, will find out via the information osmosis that always seems at work in groups like this. No one else has asked him about it. He supposes they’ve all been distracted. “No, I just... I lost her.”

“How?”

“She got taken.” His nails are digging into his palms again, hard enough to send sparks of pain flickering up his arms. Later he’ll examine them and discover—without much surprise—that he’s cut bloody little crescents into his flesh. “Car. I chased it. I couldn’t...”

“Oh,” Carol murmurs, and says nothing else.

Someone else might have tried to comfort him. Tell him that _it’s not his fault,_ that _there’s nothing he could have done_. Line of complete and utter bullshit, and naturally Carol knows him well enough to not condescend to him in that way. She’s quiet. She’s sitting with him. She’s letting that be enough.

But.

“She’s alive,” he whispers. “She is.”

He has no way of knowing this. He has no reason to believe it, and many reasons to believe otherwise.

He merely has faith.

Carol doesn’t argue with this, either. What she does is return her hand to his knee, and this time he lets it stay there. He uncoils under it, and after another few seconds he lifts his own free hand—sparking fresh pain as he flexes it—and places it over hers. Curls his fingers around it and squeezes.

Her hand in his in the cemetery. Warm and slender and small. Fingers threaded with his. _Squeeze_.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Carol murmurs, and exhales heavily, ducking her head. And there’s more there, he intuits all at once—more than the usual ordeals. When she says we she might be talking about all of them, but he suspects she isn’t. He suspects that we is confined to him and to her alone, at least for the moment.

“Yeah.” His turn to study her. She’s direct with him when she’s picking at him; he can give her the same courtesy. “What happened to you?”

“Mm?” She starts, as if in that small span of time she’d slipped into somewhere and somewhen else, and blinks at him. “What do you mean?”

Evasion. She doesn’t hide it any better than he does. He purses his lips and tips the point of the bow at the trees and the dark. “Out there. On the road. Somethin’ happened, didn’t it?”

She shrugs, not meeting his eyes. Yes, something happened. And the fact of the matter is that Carol Peletier might not allow him to close himself off, not from her, but she’s better at closing her own self off from everyone and everything than most. For some of the same reasons as him, possibly.

But this feels new.

He nudges her elbow with his. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She releases her heaviest sigh yet, and the smile she gives him is positively pained. “Look, can we just... Can we not? Can we not talk about it right now? I’ll tell you, I promise, I just... Not now.” She gives his hand another squeeze. “Can’t we just sit?”

“Yeah,” he says softly. Because they can. They can sit. He’d like that. He’d like to sit with her, just her, leave the others to their fire and to each other, because he can be with Carol but he doesn’t think he can be with them, not when they’re smiling and laughing that way. Not when he has to see Glenn and Maggie and how they are with each other. He isn’t sure quite why that should bother him so particularly, but it does.

“We found a place I thought we could stay,” he says after a few wordless minutes. “The two of us, me and her. Thought we could get it secure, make it safe. It was a good place. Until it wasn’t anymore.”

_We could have been happy there. I could have been happy. I wouldn’t have had to try to feel that way. It would have just been true._

_I _was_ happy._

“That’s always how it goes,” she says, reaches up with her other hand and lifts a loose strand of hair behind his ear. He doesn’t shake her away. He isn’t in the mood to be contrary. “We always run.”

Yes, they always do. But he came so close—so _close,_ he’s sure of it—to not having to run anymore.

Then she was gone and all he could do was run until he dropped. And she’s still gone, and alive doesn’t mean not gone.

He was so happy in that instant when he saw Carol. He was so happy when he ran to her and threw himself at her, and the happiness was simple and effortless and for a few precious seconds it admitted nothing else but itself, the light of it blotting out the darkness of everything else. Now that’s over, and he’s not happy anymore. He is, but he’s not. He’s not confident that he ever will be—unless. Until.

But out of everyone else here, all these people he loves, there’s no one he’d rather be unhappy with right now than Carol.

_She’s alive._

He can have faith. A little. For now.


End file.
